I have a girlfriend really crazy and creative which transformed his militancy in the Palestinian cause in a roaming one. But if you wonder how it can be realized so well let's see what this wonderful crazy one did on her own car ... I love her too much in general but after that I really adore her: D It still to finish, she told me so I'll add more pictures in next days , what to say Then? Commenting on this she said me: - it will give ideas to people Sarko will go crazy Lmfao hahahaaaaa - So hats off to you twice my beautiful sister Christine go and make him die for rage spinning at full speed with your nice Palestinian-Lebanese humanitarian car :D vruuuuum vruuum

This evening i am so happy cause some people came to talk me in Carcassonne and seing my car... But!!! The thing that made me also happier was the day of my birthday in Narbonne in wich Rachid and Karim left me a message with their telephone numbers, after this event we meet and together we will organise a boycott mobbing to the Narbonne Carrefour, thanks to them, and thanks to all the people that take a bit of their time to read and come to talk with me, well after i painted on my car other messages but i still didn't finished, but soon i will show you my car completely decorated.....! yéyééééé ! Lmfaosource:- Ma voiture dingue . ♥ HAAHAAAA :)

Pro-Israel organizations pressured an Oakland children’s museum to cancel an upcoming exhibition of drawings made by Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip. Community leaders say the shutting down of the exhibition is the result of a disturbing — and well-funded — campaign to silence Palestinian voices across the US.
On 8 September, just two weeks before the exhibition was set to open to the public, the board of directors of the Museum of Children’s Art (MOCHA) announced that they had canceled “A Child’s View of Gaza.” The board shut down the show due to pressure from “constituents,” according to a statement made by Randolph Bell, the board’s chairman, in the San Francisco Chronicle (“Oakland museum cancels Palestinian kids’ war art,” 9 September 2011).
The show was curated in partnership with the Berkeley-based non-profit group Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA), which has been working for 23 years to advocate for Palestinian, Iraqi and Lebanese children’s rights. Barbara Lubin,MECA’s executive director, told The Electronic Intifada that it was “upsetting and infuriating” that the show was canceled, but she wasn’t surprised.
“Anybody who knows this issue knows that the Jewish Federations of North America and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs have launched a multi-million dollar project to combat what they call the ‘delegitmization’ of Israel,” Lubin said. “They try and suffocate the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement and censor Palestinian cultural initiatives. What they’re doing is financing the work of silencing and shutting down anyone who wants to talk about what’s really happening to Palestinians.”
The Chronicle also reported that the board of directors at MOCHA vaguely cited the “inappropriate nature” of the content of the children’s drawings in their decision to shut down the exhibit. Some of the Palestinian children’s illustrations show tanks, guns and explosions, but the board’s assertion that these images are “inappropriate” enough to censor is clearly selective.
In years past, MOCHA had successfully exhibited strikingly similar artwork by children in Iraq who drew from their personal experiences of war following the 2003 US-led invasion and subsequent occupation. Another exhibition several years ago showed artwork by children made during the Second World War that “featured images of Hitler, burning airplanes, sinking battleships, empty houses and a sad girl next to a Star of David,” the Chronicle added.
Lubin said that the difference in this context is simple: “The pro-Israel groups are afraid that people will start understanding what’s really going on with Israeli policy through seeing exhibits like the one we put together. They don’t want people to know that Palestinian children are suffering. They’re afraid of us hearing that other side. For 63 years we’ve heard one side in this country and around the world, and it’s time for the other side to be heard.”

Stretching Israel’s siege from Gaza to Oakland

The censored drawings were created through local children’s mental health initiatives in Gaza immediately following Israel’s attacks in the winter of 2008-09, during which approximately 1,400 Palestinians, including more than 300 children, were killed.
Ziad Abbas, associate director of MECA, told The Electronic Intifada that several art-based organizations in the Gaza Strip began working with traumatized children in an effort to help them channel their fears, anger and trauma through artistic expression. Those drawings resulted in the collection of artwork that was to be showcased at the children’s museum.
“The art projects were born out of a necessity to try to reduce the impact and effects of the attacks which killed hundreds of children in Gaza. These drawings came from that kind of therapy to express their feelings,” he said.
Abbas added that the child artists were thrilled that their work had “brokenIsrael’s siege on Gaza” when the drawings made their way to a museum halfway across the world.
“It was important for these children to know that their voices were going to be heard in Oakland. However, they didn’t expect the siege to stretch all the way from Gaza to California, which is essentially what happened when MOCHAcanceled the exhibit due to pressure from these groups,” Abbas said.

Major donors: “Funding was not jeopardized”

Upon investigation, it emerged that those “constituents” who got the ear ofMOCHA’s board chair included pro-Israel public relations institutions with extraordinarily large budgets and organized community outreach programs. In the Bay Area, these organizations include the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC), a subsidiary branch of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA); and the local chapter of the Jewish Community Federation (JCF), which operates under the umbrella of the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA).
The JCRC and the JCF both receive substantial funding from the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, which has also funded MOCHA.
The fund, based in San Francisco, is a major donor to arts, science, social justice and Jewish organizations around the Bay Area across the political and cultural spectrum. MOCHA received $30,000 in grants from the Haas fund in 2011 (Recent grantmaking: The Arts,” Walter & Elise Haas Fund website, accessed 9 September 2011).
However, a program coordinator with the Walter & Elise Haas Fund told The Electronic Intifada that their staff had talked to the museum about possible public concern with the exhibit, but that the art show “was their decision and their funding was not in any way jeopardized with their doing it.”
Pam David, the executive director of the Haas Fund, declined to comment for this article.
John Patchner, communications director for the East Bay Community Foundation — which has awarded tens of thousands of dollars in grants to MOCHA over the years — told The Electronic Intifada that they had “not been contacted by anyone in connection with the cancellation of the exhibit and we’re currently seeking additional information from the Museum of Children’s Art.”
But there are many other foundations that support MOCHA. And in August at least one pro-Israel online campaign encouraged the general public to directly contact MOCHA funders, and published a list of various foundations, in a bid to cancel the children’s art exhibition.

Pro-Israel groups to “pressure civic leaders” in new $6M initiative

The timing of Kahn’s determination to pressure the MOCHA board is significant. Just eleven months ago, the JFNA pledged to invest $6 million in a new, three-year initiative they call the “Israel Action Network.”
Working alongside the JCPA — of which the JCRC, Kahn’s organization, is a subsidiary — the Israel Action Network “is expected to serve as a rapid-response team charged with countering the growing campaign to isolate Israel as a rogue state akin to apartheid-era South Africa — a campaign that the Israeli government and Jewish groups see as an existential threat to the Jewish state … The network will monitor the delegitimization movement worldwide and create a strategic plan to counter it wherever it crops up” (“Federations, JCPA teaming to fight delegitimization of Israel,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 25 October 2010).
The JFNA stated that this new campaign would seek to influence “civic leaders,” and said that it would be fully staffed and “up and running” by 1 January 2011.
According to their recent tax forms, the JFNA’s investment of $6 million in this new campaign should not be a financial burden — they listed more than $197 million in total assets between June 2009 and June 2010 (Return of organization exempt from income tax, 2009, 2009-2010 [PDF]).
The fact that these enormous, well-funded Israeli advocacy organizations have turned their attention to a singular, modest children’s art exhibition in Oakland highlights the Israeli lobbies’ tireless efforts to silence Palestinian expression. Deborah Agre of MECA agreed, saying that “no fight is too small” for these groups.
MECA’s Barbara Lubin added that the attack on this children’s art show is just one in a long line of such campaigns.
“But this is particularly saddening to me because these are voices of children,” Lubin said. “And as I said to the head of the board of directors at the museum,MECA loses, MOCHA loses, but more importantly, the children from Gaza lose the most. They’ve always been the ones to lose the most. Not only do they have to live through these bombings and the siege, but then when they try to express their experiences through art, they’re shut down.”
“There’s only one winner in all of this,” Lubin added, “And that is the Zionist lobby who intimidate, harass and do everything they can to make it impossible for people to have these kinds of exhibits.”

MOCHA’s board of directors: supporting all children, or just some?

According to its tax documents, accessed from public records, it is clear thatMOCHA is a grassroots organization highly dependent on funding from outside grants and foundations. MOCHA listed just over $700,000 in contributions and grants in 2009 — whereas salaries and employee benefits accounted for approximately double that amount. Their fee-based children’s art programs bring in additional revenue of just under $1 million for that year.
If pro-Israel lobbyists indeed placed threatening calls to foundations that supportMOCHA, it is understandable that they could feel frightened by the potential loss of money for the next fiscal year and would therefore bend to pressure by these outside groups. But MOCHA may have violated its own mission statement in doing so. On its tax forms, MOCHA states its mission is “to ensure that the arts are a fundamental part of the lives of all children.”
Ziad Abbas said that it’s wrong for the board of directors to put conditions on that support. “Do they really support all children, or just certain ones? Certainly, in this situation, the Palestinian children who made this artwork are not being supported at all,” he remarked.
The Electronic Intifada asked whether the children in Gaza had been informed that their exhibition was shut down, and what their reaction was to the news. Abbas explained that he had just received a call from one of the young artists in Gaza who saw MECA’s press release on the Internet that explained that the show was canceled.
“He was extremely disappointed, and the other children were obviously shocked and sad as well,” Abbas replied. “It’s upsetting to them to hear that a children’s art museum across the world decided that their personal [narratives] are offensive, and then silenced their voices and artwork. When you hear about an art museum that has violated its own mission to censor children’s artwork and children’s artistic expression, it’s extremely disappointing.”

Community support is out in force

Following Thursday’s announcement by the MOCHA board of directors, MECA has been flooded with phone calls and emails from supporters not only just across the Bay Area but worldwide who are appalled at the shutting down of the children’s art show. And Lubin said that while outrage at the museum is understandable, the institution is not the enemy.
“MOCHA is very dear to our hearts,” Lubin emphasized. “We love this organization and respect the work they do. It’s an essential institution in the Bay Area. Our anger is not at the people who work at MOCHA; rather, our anger is at the board who do not have the courage to stand up to this kind of intimidation from the pro-Israel groups. We’re asking people to direct their anger at the board and at the Zionist organizations who do this kind of muzzling. But certainly not at the organization itself.”
MECA has started an email action campaign in an effort to counter-pressure the board of directors with support and gratitude for hosting the Palestinian children’s artwork. They are also asking people to come to the gallery on 24 September, on the planned opening day of the exhibition, in a show of support for the show even if it remains canceled.
Meanwhile, Lubin and the MECA staff are busy figuring out alternative venues for the exhibition.
“We’re not sure where the show will be yet, but we’ll continue to work on seeing that these voices are heard and that these pictures are shown. People want to do something, and have been offering space in their homes, shops and even in schools,” Abbas said. “They won’t shut down these children’s voices.”

Nora Barrows-Friedman is an award-winning independent journalist, and is a staff writer and editor for The Electronic Intifada. She also writes for Inter Press Service, Al Jazeera, Truthout and other outlets, and regularly reports from Palestine. Related LinksMiddle East Children’s Alliance

Oakland’s Museum of Children’s Art (MOCHA) recently announced that it is canceling a planned exhibit of artwork created by Palestinian children living in Gaza because art about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is “not appropriate for an open gallery accessible by all children.” The museum had scheduled the exhibit to begin on September 24 and had promoted it on its web site. The sudden cancellation of the event apparently followed complaints by “pro-Israel” organizations in the Bay Area.

The exhibit, entitled “A Child’s View of Gaza,” features artwork by Palestinian children ages 6-14, most of which was created as part of a psychosocial support program that uses art to help these children heal from the violence they have witnessed and trauma they have experienced. The program is sponsored by the Middle East Children’s Alliance, a Berkeley-based nonprofit humanitarian aid organization that provides food, medicine, clothing, and community and individual support and resources to children in Gaza. The project in question, entitled “Let the Children Heal and Play,” is designed to address the psychosocial needs of children by allowing them to express themselves through art in an effort to help them heal and to avert long-term adverse outcomes, such as “a lifetime of depression, anxiety, and rage.”

The censorship of this exhibit would only be justified if it were a political ploy, such as a collection of artwork obtained by a political organization that was using the children for ulterior motives. However, the evidence is quite clear that this is a truly humanitarian program designed to help these children heal through art therapy. The art represents the original and sincere expressions of these children, and the individual and organization that curated the artwork aim primarily to give the artistic expression of these children an outlet in what is certainly an appropriate venue: a children’s museum.

Ironically, by censoring the exhibit, the Oakland Museum of Children’s Art has itself committed a political ploy, leaving the realm of cultural exhibition and entering the area of politics and cultural repression. By canceling the exhibit, MOCHA is actually the group making a political statement.

This is not the first time art by Palestinian children has been censored. Several years ago, Brandeis University removed from a university art exhibit paintings by Palestinian teenagers that were curated by a Brandeis student as a project for a class entitled “The Arts of Building Peace.” School officials censored the paintings because they were too “one-sided.”

The thinly-veiled arguments that artwork by Palestinian children, curated appropriately by individuals or organizations who are sincerely interested in showcasing artistic expression, is inappropriate because the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is off-limits or the artwork is one-sided disguise an underlying censorship of not only artwork, but of the truth. In fact, that is the real reason for this censorship in the first place: the unwillingness to depict, in any way, the truth about the severe psychological damage done to children who have suffered as a result of Israel’s incursion into Gaza and its blockade.

As a physician who has treated victims of violence and trauma, and as a public health practitioner, I can testify to the enormous public health impact that conflicts like that in the Middle East have on populations and especially on children. This is truly a public health issue. Censoring the effects of violence on children is essentially no different than hiding from the public the fact that a swine flu epidemic is spreading throughout Mexico. Would we censor information about swine flu occurrences in Mexico because we are afraid that providing this information is too political or controversial?

Whether “justified” because of terrorist attacks in Israel or not, the damage done to Palestinians is not a matter of opinion, but of readily verifiable facts. Censoring “A Child’s View of Gaza” creates the exact opposite of what the censors are trying to avoid: providing a platform for a political statement. In essence, MOCHA is using these Palestinian children as pawns in a political maneuver that delivers a clear message about what the public is or is not to believe. MOCHA is essentially contributing toward the suppression of the truth about the effects of the Israeli incursion into, and blockade of Gaza.

Henry Steel Commager wrote: “The fact is that censorship always defeats its own purpose, for it creates, in the end, the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion.”

The Museum of Children’s Art has demonstrated that it has lost its ability to exercise real discretion about the appropriateness of exhibits that it chooses to sponsor. Political objectives, rather than the authenticity and value of the artistic expression inherent in the works, are now the primary criterion for its decisions.

Dr. Michael Siegel is a professor of community health sciences at the Boston University School of Public Health. He conducts research in a variety of public health issues, focuses on tobacco and alcohol use, and maintains a blog on tobacco control policy issues called The Rest of the Story.